EIFF

Edinburgh Film Festival was a great experience and gave me some insight of the type of films that have a chance to get into such a prestigious festival, also the great variety of people who usually attend the event. 

It was full of press, Scottish citizens who are regular at the festival, as well as many international people who travel the world to attend film festivals. For example, during "The girlfriend experience" I was sitting next to an Italian person wearing a Cannes Festival Cap, who told me he was about to see  "Antichrist" next, because it's really eccentric and it left him confused in Cannes. That's what caught my attention to go see this film.

Also it's worth mentioning the many fresh graduates from Glasgow Uni's Film& TV course, who came well prepared and fired interesting questions to the film makers. 

As far as the film program is concerned, we started off with Adventureland on Saturday afternoon. It's an entertaining, witty film set in the 80's, about a teenager who has just graduated from college but lacks funds to go into graduate school. He starts working in a theme park, where without realizing it,  he instantly becomes the center of attention. Moreover, he finds a girlfriend with many secrets.  The best part of the film was the use of 80's hits.

After Adventureland, we didn't have any other free films to attend. The drawback of the program is the arrangement of 4 films that start at 9, then 2 starting at 9.30, and 2 at 11.30 (All in different cinemas!). So practically it's hard to see more than 2 or 3 films per day, and not feel totally exhausted moving from one place to another. 

On Saturday we headed to Sheraton for a Scene Breakdown class, but came across Allan Cuming who was interviewed by BBC and had children as an audience. He shared that his greatest dream is to perform in the Citizens in Glasgow, which still hasn't happened. I stayed until the end of the interview, so I missed the class. 

The next day, I went to see  International Animations 2, which was the reason why I chose my dates. I am extremely disappointed that I missed the Saturday ones, due to lack of organization. Some of the animations I saw were quite impressive-  "Wires" (Spain), "Coffee and Chicory" (Slovenia), "The performance" (Germany). I don't remember the names of the rest, one Russian one was quite good, but I was surprised to see the level of entry in the festival. Among all the above stunning animations, there were a few with rough qualities, as if they were 1st year student projects. No wonder that a Glasgow School of Art student had an oscar nomination for animation, before even graduation!

Afterwards, we headed to Cineworld to see Running in Traffic, produced by Abigail Hawkins. 

It was not my idea to see it.... I felt absolutely exhausted after watching it...

I guess I generally don't like films based in Glasgow, because I don't find the topics interesting enough to follow. Maybe an Edinburgh film or somewhere in the Highlands will be much more intriguing to me.  

Luckily Sunday turned out to be a long film day! We managed to get some free tickets for a documentary called "Outrage" and a foreign production "Vinyan". The documentary turned out to be brilliant! It focuses on homosexual politicians who have voted against gay rights or marriage throughout their careers, despite their own sexual orientation. It's rather controversial, and apparently quite relevant right now in America. The great thing about it is that it shows many different angles of the story, and also the different people suffering from such life build on lies- for example, the politicians' wives. One of them shared that she had no idea when she married her husband and found out after years of happy marriage. On the other hand, the politicians who have had the guts to admit their secret,  have managed to free themselves of the double life and great burden that they've felt forced to carry. 

 But the point is not admitting sexual orientation, it's being true to yourself and not following "the strong of the day", especially when it totally opposes one's lifestyle. 

I'll end it here, and blog about the rest later on. 

By the way, for everyone who I haven't mentioned it: I saw GAEL GARCIA BERNAL y DIEGO LUNA!!!! How great is that :)

Week 6 and 7

The week starting from 25th of May was mainly focused on production. We had regular sessions with Abigail, Ray also talked to us about organization and what needs to be done.
On Tuesday the 26th I was filming Black Cats and Blue Angels- to be honest, I'd rather be in the audience and enjoy the show than stand on a table and record it. There were a few small problems with PD110, but everything was ok in the end.
I don't quite remember what we did every single day, but here is an outline on the tasks our production team was working on.
Location was not found easily, since all the people I contacted either wanted more money or were simply not happy with film crews around. Therefore, we settled for Benoit's flat. Now the priority is for him to make his landlord sign the location release form... which I am a bit concerned about.
Casting Bau was great fun, unfortunately Gianluca was not an actor- just a vibrant kid.
I am happy with the choice of Robert- he is my favorite.

On Monday me and Charlotte had a tutorial with Adam about our mobile content idea. We showed him visual reference of our Characters and Location, but still need to work on the inciting incident.
Kim's class on scene-by-scene breakdown was very enlightening on how to make a better structure and improve your writing skills.

Being still busy with production, I'll keep my blog very brief. Moreover, now I don't reside permanently at one place, so I'll keep moving to places with no internet connection.

20.05-22.05

Wednesday was a screening.

Thursday- We found out which script is chosen to go into production.... and the winner is: Charlotte Carden: Little Clown. I am very happy with this choice, considering how different and interesting the story is. It is also challenging for me as a producer and 1st AD to provide all the props, a child-juggler and fit into the budget. I have a good feeling for this film, everyone is trying to collaborate on the project. So for the rest of the day we were allocating location and actors.

On Friday we had our last TV class with Andy, discussing the future of broadcasting and the increase of online TV users. In the afternoon, Abigail helped us with tips on the film, which we'll add to on Wednesday. Generally this week the production team will concentrate on tasks equally divided by us. 

Show Light

Saturday was our first day at BBC. My role was in the sound department, working together with Benoit and Graeme. Our supervisors (Corrina and Alan) were quite nice and I feel we learned something from them, just by helping and watching for 2 days. The audio set up takes an awful lot of time, for instance, we had to go on the roof and pass down cables to whoever was plugging them into the heavy speakers which were hanging on hooks. Also we probably used at least 30 XLRs, on various mikes. The first day was just to set up everything, and everyone was calm and friendly. Afterwards, there was a small dinner at the Cafe Bar, where I met some students from Croatia. One of them was a cinematographer and we discusses mainly the decrease in the use of film these day.
Sunday felt busier when Show light started. As well as passing the mike to the speakers in the audience at Q&A, I also helped Alan to adjust the mike levels to each presenter wearing a personal mike, also the hand held mike levels. The audio studio in BBC is amazing, they've got such an impressive equipment which at first seems so difficult to figure out how to use, but later on it gets simple. I was quite happy doing audio for 2 days, even though I didn't have many breaks, simply because they were used to chase down presenters and mike them up.
On Monday I was on camera from the morning till the afternoon. I changed just 2 cameras, with the main focus on steady CU, MS and WS. Very simple, given that we always had people to assist us with using the equipment. I presume the only difficult camera to use was the hand held one, which I didn't have time for, but it's quite heavy and sometimes challenging to get audience reactions when the audience was rather bored and asleep at some of the talks. What funny moments those were! So camera was great! I am looking forward to see the new equipment that the RSAMD will purchase for next year. We also met Roberto Shaefer, a cinematographer who assumed we are much more experienced in lighting than we actually are, but he also told us about the various jobs he had when he first started working in film. I quite enjoyed his presentation on Quantum of Solace and all the lights he used for some scenes. It sounded completely mad, but with such budget he could afford it.
Tuesday was our last day at BBC. I didn't want to leave, I quite like it there! Derrek, the director was very friendly with us. On that day, I was doing vision- basically, playing with a few racks to control the beam and opacity of the lights in studio A. My first 1 and a half hours were absolutely boring and I was struggling to stay awake at the techy talks. Thanks god, it got better later on, and we had a good laugh in the vision studio about the camera men's struggling to find interested faces in the audience.

As a whole, I loved the BBC experience that we had at Showlight. In terms of the content of the event, I don't think it's our specialism, because the practitioners invited were mainly working on concerts, advertising and theater productions, or mainly lighting buildings. I am sure the equipment could be applied in the field of film too, but I particularly was not familiar with all the equipment they mentioned. Despite this, I am glad we had the chance to talk to a few cinematographers. I hope that BBC assistants again!

Week starting from 11th of May

On Monday we had individual tutorials with Richard. I had some new premises, but the rather complicated plots didn't seem to give any space for character development. I wish I had more time to work that out, so for next tutorial, I'll try to be more prepared. Generally Richard likes a few of my premises and wants me to continue working on them, but sometimes the idea stops at some point and is quite hard to continue building the story arch.

In the afternoon class, Kim came was presented with our Coronation Street pitches. My group was working on a storyline around Dev which is actually quite entertaining. The next task was to write 15 episodes with beats, according to what type of story it is (A,B,C). In order to do that, the three groups from the class put their 15 tags on the wall and we all decided which was going to be the main story and the smaller ones.

Tuesday was a short class with Ray. He was hoping to discuss the scrips, but at that point we were still not informed which one is chosen.
Wednesday was a screening with Bonnie and Clyde. I imagined the story in a completely different way, influenced by Jay Z's and Beyonce's video ~:)
Thursday was a mobile media class with Adam. He was talking to us in groups to find out the development of our webisodes. Me and Charlotte pitched a new idea which he likes. The only thing that bothers me is we don't have much time to work on them, because of various other projects. The webisodes are quite important and hopefully we'll fit into the time limit.
On Friday the producer John York came to talk to the class about script writing, story arch, character development and so on.

Week 4.05- 8.05

Monday- holiday

Tuesday- Editing assignment of the other group's project. I found it challenging to put together shots that usually would not match, but a good editor should be able to do magic with these matters. A long but enjoyable experience!

On Wednesday we watched Paradise Now and we blogged about it. The film was definitely engaging.

In the afternoon a representative of Film G competition came to talk to us. It all seems quite inspiring and motivating, but somehow I am not attracted to the idea. I'll need to do a bit of research to find out more about the Gaelic culture and therefore come up with an idea for a short. Something tells me it's not going to happen though. If only if it was another language it would be much easier for me. 

On Thursday we discussed the misrepresentation of muslims on screen and how it affects us as film makers. To sum up, there are plenty of topics explored in films which are extremely controversial, so it's not easy to please everyone. Religion is one of the most dangerous subject matters because it directly affects a major or minority group, which is going to express an opinion afterwards. As a whole, I do believe muslims should be presented in a brighter light.

In the afternoon we watched some webisodes, my favorite one is Sofia's diary. Adams expects us to some up with an idea for similar platform.

Friday was a TV class, we watched 2 documentaries on how TV reflects or challenges the society, sometimes even changes it. Channel 4 has an interesting history, especially those years when they've aired a sort of pornographic films, for bigger ratings maybe? 

In the afternoon everyone had a tutorial with Abigail to discuss the schedule strip for Floating is easy. She seemed satisfied with my efforts. Generally I hope for the future we do that kind of work with a software, so it will save us plenty of time.  

Paradise Now

I guess we the reason we watched this film is to spot the misrepresentation of islamic culture and the stereotypical concept of fanatic terrorism. The 2 main characters, however, are represented in a positive way, people that we would like to meet in the beginning and therefore, understand their motivation afterwards. Said and Khaled are childhood friends who have grown up in Nablus, Palestine and feel that their whole life has been oppressed by Israel. Their heroes are martyrs whose main goal is justice and tolerance, so they decide to go on the same path. Said's father has died as a collaborator, something he doesn't see himself as. In this difficult atmosphere of political incorrectness, Suha tries to convince Said in more peaceful methods of fight and struggle. She is a daughter of a famous martyr and doesn't see the point of such death, since it hasn't changed the injustice Palestinians are living in.  At first she reaches his heart and he's unsure of wether is right to continue on this path, but later on he's the one who pulls the cord and blows off the Israeli bus. Khaled eventually changes his mind and steps back  from the whole operation, tries to save his friend too but fails. One of the scenes where Khaled is about to be recorded holding a gun and a powerful speech is very interesting regarding the perception of such occupation.  His comrades are eating, the camera is not working as if it's not a big deal to the people who organize the whole event. Probably that's a hint that the mission matters only to our main characters, who are actually manipulated by their weaknesses.

I am not sure what the message of the film is supposed to be: for example, what makes the martyrs choose this path? Is it the posters in the town center that makes them heroes,  the honor to be chosen for such mission, or the endless hope that their sacrifice is worth. Suha is depicted as a strong female character, she has her own believes and stands up to them. Probably Said's reasons to carry out the operation despite the first obstacle, is his lack of desire to go back into the same old reality. I was hoping both characters (Suha and Said) to end up together :( In terms of character development, Said and Khaled swapped their roles and believes, they both suffered changes which made me buy into it.